1. Rain makes the traffic to West Hollywood almost bearable.

2. Everyone loves Go-Go, especially gay men.

3. Two out of three Asian girls dressed up as Go-Go this year.* I theorize it is because there are only so many costume options available to us: geisha, Chinese doll, courtesan, ho hum. We are all excited about the prospect of being a killer schoolgirl -- can you blame us?

There's a better picture of the costume if you look at the extended entry.

*According to my completely scientific study that involved Rob shouting out "There's another Go-Go!" whenever he saw one.

At some point in the last 24 hours, I developed a huge, unwieldy crush on James Mercer of The Shins. Yes, it did coincide with the purchase of their new album, Chutes Too Narrow, which I have been listening to nonstop. James, if you are reading this, it won't work out because I love my boyfriend -- but thanks for making my world a happier place with your lovely, strange lyrics and huge eyebrows.

Sigh.

Other than that, life is NaNoWriMo and little else.

Meet Ginger.

His heart is like an heirloom tomato. Have you ever had an heirloom tomato? They look kind of funny: wrinkled, soft, with many strange-shaped lobes. But when you cut into them, they bleed purple-red, yellow-orange or clean chartreuse, shockingly pretty. There aren�t many seeds; they are dense and full. And when you taste them �-- warm from the sun, unadorned --� all you can think is, I have never had a tomato until this day.

And when the season is over, you can only stare sadly at the shams on the shelves, so waxy and round, and resolve to wait until you can have the real thing.

One year ago, I took a trip to Paris by myself. I was changing jobs after working full-time for almost a year and needed an adventure. It was my first time traveling alone. I spoke no French. And it was miserable.

I present some snapshots of my time there.

My suitcase is heavy and obvious. It has no wheels; I lug it off the train and walk up the steps to face Montmartre. I am already sweaty and I have no idea which way to walk, but I walk with purpose away from the Metro, deathly afraid of looking like a tourist or -- even worse -- looking like what I am: an American girl who speaks no French, alone for a week on her first trip to Paris.

I think I am walking the wrong way. Some of the streets seem to have names, others do not -- none appear on the undetailed map in the back of my travel guide, which I am afraid to pull out and look at anyway. Every half block or so, I have to stop and rest, open and close my reddened palms. I zigzag across the tree-lined median, trying to find a street sign, willing myself to have some sort of innate sense of direction, but nothing appears. I think I am going the wrong way. I turn around and walk the other way. With purpose.

A few rest stops later, sitting in a park near the Metro station I just emerged from, I eat some dried apricots and watch two old men who are watching me. I know I look like a tourist, ridiculously obvious. I don't care. My hands are on fire. I haven't slept in almost twenty hours.

There is a child in a puffy red down jacket, jumping from the jungle gym. I look at her mother, and the old old buildings behind them, and wish I lived here.

My room is next to the bathroom. Or, more correctly, the toilet, which resides in a tiny room almost exactly the size of the toilet. The walls are thin and I can, unfortunately, hear every small grunt and sigh, even from my bed, far away from the bathroom wall.

I have terrible insomnia, exacerbated by the fact that the room has no clock and I wear no watch. I did bring my cell phone, but when I set the alarm the first night, it drained the battery. I feel as lonely as that one bar of remaining power, sitting in my dark room, sniffing its vague fried-chicken-and-sweet-disinfectant smell, and not knowing what time it is. Is it only 9pm and do I have the whole yawning night before me? Or is it 3am and are only the taxi drivers awake with me?

I lie awake. If someone were to run me over tomorrow, no one would know who I was or who they should contact. I resolve to put a small card with this information in my wallet tomorrow.

Someone enters the bathroom. I want to cover my head with the hard French pillow, but it turns out to be more of a bolster than a pillow, long and thin and unsuitable for blocking out the rich sounds emanating from the wall across the room. It is only the second day.

...is a poet who came to my writing class last week and read. He seemed a little awkward in his skin but completely comfortable in his writing, which was funny, frank and inspiring. He was great.

I'm getting all his books.

Today I went to the American Apparel store that just opened up in LA. (Read their mission statement if you don't know anything about them.) Everyone at the store was so nice and they give a 10% discount to people in the neighborhood!

It's nice when you can get excited about a company because you know they aren't secretly enslaving tiny children in Cambodia.

On Sunday, I discover the movies. I am in a new neighborhood, wandering around in circles, stopping to write cheerful postcards in small mossy parks. I feel full of something heavy, soggy, but I don't let it leak out onto the postcards, which sound optimistic and adventurous.

I feel like having an anti-adventure.

I have scoured the pages of Pariscope at night, alone in my sad hotel room, so when I pass by the movie theater for the second time, I recognize one of the movies that is playing: Bend Like Beckham. It seems cheerful. I think of David Sedaris, spending his waking hours in Paris in the dark safeness of movie theaters, and decide to try it.

After an embarrassing disclosure of my inability to speak French while buying my movie ticket -- because the French tapes I got from the library never included the phrase Are you a student? so the customer/merchant script I know by heart is interrupted when I hear those unfamiliar words, forcing me to stumblingly admit that I do not, in fact, speak French, and by the way I am a stupid American -- I try to find a bathroom. My morning cafe au lait has been sloshing around for the last hour and one of the other reasons for going to the movies was to have access to a public restroom. But the usher in her bright blue suit directs me outside to wait, full-bladdered, for my movie to begin. Fine.

When they finally let us in, I look around for a restroom in the lobby, but there are no doors. No concession stand either. It's weird. I follow the herd upstairs to the dim theater, watching the walls carefully for anything resembling a restroom. Nothing. I take my seat, feeling a little panicked, wondering if I know how to say, Where on earth is your bathroom? when I see, next to the movie screen, a tiny sign that says "Restrooms." But in French.

I jump up and follow the sign and enter an impossibly tiny room with a many-handled toilet. After a luxurious pee, I have to try a few of them before I find the one that flushes. But I am completely at peace.

Back in the theater, the woman who tore my ticket -- who, incidentally, is wearing little blue hat to match her outfit -- is walking around with a tray of snacks, like a cigarette girl. Now that my bladder is empty, I am able to feel joy again, so this sight makes me glad.

When the lights dim, I relax. No more worrying about looking like a tourist, no more dreading the next time I'll have to speak to someone, no more thinking about my deep and total loneliness. It's nice to hear people speaking in English. I almost want to stay there, tucked into the cushiony seat, lulled with a language I understand, for the rest of my trip.

But I don't.